Today, there is significant interest in developing methods and systems for improving the prediction of the life consumption of individual components in a machine, in particular machines with moving parts. By improving the accuracy of such methods, the applied safety limits may be reduced, and unnecessary replacement of components may be avoided. When applied to an entire fleet (e.g. a military aircraft fleet) the cost savings may be significant as well as allowing for an increased operational lifetime. Furthermore, in the unusual event that conventional methods are too optimistic, refined methods may avoid failure of components, thus avoiding uncalculated stops in operation or even more importantly accidents.
Examples of interesting applications where improved life consumption predictions may be useful include aircrafts, gas/steam turbines, trucks, loaders, nuclear plants and wind turbines.
A conventional method for predicting the life consumption of a component in a machine is to measure one or a combination of the usage/run time, distance or count the number of cycles of a predefined load session or a conservative load session. A load session is the time when the machine is in operation, for example for an aircraft a load session may be defined as flying from point A to point B with a predefined rotor speed variation. Prediction of the estimated life consumption of the component may thereafter be calculated by using a numerical calculation method, such as e.g. the finite element method, FEM. The FEM-method calculates stresses and strains for the component exposed to various loads during the load session, such as e.g. thermal and mechanical loads. The FEM-method calculates stresses and strains by using a mesh pattern on e.g. a 20-model or a 30-model, wherein the mesh pattern comprises nodes and elements. By utilizing a denser mesh, i.e. smaller elements per area resulting in a larger number of nodes and elements, the accuracy of the results are improved.
Although the FEM-method itself provides for a substantially accurate method for determining e.g. stresses and strains of a component resulting from a flight session, there are still a plurality of variables that may be inaccurate when evaluating e.g. the predicted life consumption of the component. The inaccurate variables may derive from the fact that e.g. fault measurements have been made, the calculation models are outside their valid range, etc. In order to avoid receiving and using inaccurate results from the flight sessions, an engineer has to evaluate each of the results to determine if they are within reasonable limits or not. Thereafter, the engineer may decide to rely on the calculated results or determine that an error has occurred somewhere along the calculation procedure and investigate the reason for the unreasonable result. This manually provided determination is very time consuming and inefficient.
Accordingly, there is a need to provide a method for increased automatization when evaluating parameterization reliability for components exposed to loads during operation.